Real Presence: What Does It Mean and Why Does It Matter?

By Timothy P. O'Malley, McGrath Institute for Church Life and John C. Cavadini

Winner of a first-place award for popular presentation of the faith and second-place in pastoral ministry, catechetical resource from the Catholic Media Association.

Many Catholics don’t believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. Rather, they see the bread and wine of Holy Communion as mere symbols of Christ’s body and blood. Is that disbelief just a misunderstanding or is it a blatant rejection of one of the central beliefs of the faith?

In Real Presence, University of Notre Dame theologian Timothy P. O’Malley clears up the confusion and shows you how to learn to love God and neighbor through a deeper understanding of the doctrine of real presence.

A 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that almost seventy percent of Catholics don’t believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist.

O’Malley offers a concise introduction to Catholic teaching on real presence and transubstantiation through a biblical, theological, and spiritual account of these doctrines from the early Church to today. He also explores how real presence enables us to see the vulnerability of human life and the dignity of all flesh and blood.

O’Malley leads you to a deeper understanding and renewed faith in Catholic teaching about transubstantiation and real presence by helping you learn

• how the doctrine of real presence is rooted in divine revelation and how the Church’s teaching regarding transubstantiation is spiritually fruitful for the believer today;
• how to make your own the doctrine of real presence by worshipping Christ in the Eucharist and therefore making a real assent to real presence;
• how the Eucharist, although not the exclusive presence of Christ in the Church’s liturgy and mission, is crucial in growing our capacity for recognizing those other presences; and
• the important relationship between Eucharistic communion and adoration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Release date: Mar 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646800568

Timothy P. O'Malley

Timothy P. O’Malley is a Catholic theologian, author, speaker, and director of digital educational outreach at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. He also teaches on marriage and family, sacramental theology, and catechesis in the theology department at Notre Dame. He serves as a member of the executive planning committee for the 2022–2024 Eucharistic Revival and a theological consultant for the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He earned his bachelor’s degree in theology and philosophy and his master’s degree in liturgical studies from Notre Dame. He earned a doctorate in theology and education at Boston College. O’Malley is the author of several books, including Real Presence, the award-winning Off the Hook, Divine Blessing: Liturgical Formation in the RCIA, Bored Again Catholic, and Liturgy and the New Evangelization. His articles have appeared in publications including America magazine, Religion News Service, Aleteia, Catechist, and Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly. He lives with his family in the South Bend, Indiana, area.

Book preview

Engaging Catholicism. Real Presence: What Does It Mean and Why Does It Matter? Timothy P. O'Malley. McGrath Institute for Church Life. University of Notre Dame. Foreword by John C. Cavadini. This book is essential reading at our moment in the Church's history. Mike Aquilina. Catholic author and executive vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.Real Presence

Tim O’Malley is that great rarity—a theologian who’s a joy for ordinary Catholics to read. He’s deep. He’s grounded in family life. He’s a careful observer of human behavior. And he’s funny. This book is essential reading at our moment in the Church’s history. We have failed to communicate the most important thing in life, the mystery of Christ present in the Eucharist—something our ancestors managed to pass on without the extraordinary advantages we have today. O’Malley sees the problem with extraordinary clarity and proposes very practical ways forward. Without an approach like this, our efforts at a new evangelization will be futile. With such an approach—and the grace of God—our prospects are excellent.

Mike Aquilina

Catholic author and executive vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

Experiencing God’s presence, not simply knowing the facts of Church teaching, is essential if we are to guide others to discover the gift of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. In this concise and excellent book, Timothy P. O’Malley helps us recover an integrated understanding of real presence. Once again, he has woven the academic and pastoral world beautifully. The work of the McGrath Institute is phenomenal!

Ximena DeBroeck

Director of the Division of Catechetical and Pastoral Formation

Archdiocese of Baltimore

Books in the Engaging Catholicism series from the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University Notre Dame help readers discover the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith through a concise exploration of the Church’s most important but often difficult-to-grasp doctrines as well as crucial pastoral and spiritual practices. Perfect for seekers and new Catholics, clergy and catechetical leaders, and everyone in between, the series expands the McGrath Institute’s mission to connect the Catholic intellectual life at Notre Dame to the pastoral life of the Church and the spiritual needs of her people.

Praise for the Engaging Catholicism series:

The Engaging Catholicism series offers clear and engaging presentations of what we Catholics believe and how we practice our faith. These books are written by experts who know how to keep things accessible yet substantive, and there is nothing fluffy or light about them. They should be in the hand of anyone who simply wants to live their faith more deeply every day and to share it with others who teach, pastor, or parent.

Katie Prejean McGrady

Catholic author, speaker, and host of the Ave Explores podcast

The Engaging Catholicism series is a powerful tool to bring the beauty and depth of our Catholic theological tradition to those who need it most. This series will help many to truly engage our Catholic faith.

Most Rev. Andrew Cozzens

Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis

Engaging Catholicism. Real Presence: What Does It Mean and Why Does It Matter? Timothy P. O'Malley. McGrath Institute for Church Life. University of Notre Dame. Ave Maria Press. Notre Dame, IN.

Unless noted otherwise, scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Nihil Obstat: Reverend Monsignor Michael Heintz, PhD, Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: Most Reverend Kevin C. Rhoades, Bishop of Fort Wayne–South Bend

October 5, 2020

___________________________________

© 2021 by McGrath Institute for Church Life

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press®, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556, 1-800-282-1865.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-13 978-1-64680-055-1

E-book: ISBN-13 978-1-64680-056-8

Cover image © Sidney de Almeida / iStock / Getty Images Plu.

Cover and text design by Samantha Watson.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: O’Malley, Timothy P., author.

Title: Real presence : what does it mean and why does it matter? / Timothy

   P. O’Malley, McGrath Institute for Church Life.

Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : Ave Maria Press, [2021] | Series:

   Engaging Catholicism | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary:

   "In this book, Timothy P. O’Malley helps the reader move beyond some of

   the unnecessary conflicts that developed around Eucharistic theology in

   the twentieth century and continue today. He also leads the reader to a

   deeper understanding and renewed faith in Catholic teaching about

   transubstantiation"-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020046024 | ISBN 9781646800551 (paperback) | ISBN

   9781646800568 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Lord’s Supper--Real presence. | Lord’s Supper--Catholic

   Church. | Transubstantiation. | Catholic Church--Doctrines.

Classification: LCC BX2220 .O43 2021 | DDC 234/.163--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046024

To my grandparents,

Margaret and Richard Thompson,

who taught me to bend a knee

to the Eucharistic Lord.

Contents

Series Foreword by John C. Cavadini

Preface

Obstacles to Real Presence

Real Presence in the Scriptures

Real Presence in the Fathers

Savoring the Mystery of Transubstantiation

Eucharistic Devotion and Real Presence

Conclusion: Consumed and Desired by God

Notes

series logo

Series Foreword

Doctrine is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when we consider the pastoral work of the Church. We tend to presume that doctrine is abstract, of interest primarily to theologians and clergy whose vocation it is to contemplate lofty questions of belief. On the other hand, we tend to think the pastoral life of the Church is consumed primarily with practical questions: How do we pray? How do we pass on faith to the next generation? How do we form Christians to care about the hungry and thirsty? How might our parishes become spaces of lived discipleship? What are the best practices for the formation of Catholic families? Presenting at catechetical conferences in dioceses on a specific point of Catholic theology, faculty and staff of the McGrath Institute for Church Life often hear the question, So, what’s the significance? Give me the practical takeaways.

The separation between doctrine and practice is bad for theologians, pastoral leaders, and Christians looking to grow in holiness. It leads to theologians who no longer see their vocation as connected to the Church. Academic theologians speak a language that the enlightened alone possess. On occasion, they turn their attention to the ordinary beliefs and practices of the faithful, sometimes reacting with amusement or horror that one could be so primitive as to adore the Eucharist or leave flowers before Our Lady of Guadalupe. The proper arena for the theologian to exercise her craft is assumed to be the doctoral seminar, not the parish or the Catholic secondary school.

Likewise, pastoral strategy too often develops apart from the intellectual treasury of the Church. Such strategy is unreflective, not able to critically examine its own assumptions. For example, how we prepare adolescents for Confirmation is a theological and pastoral problem. Without the wisdom of sacramental doctrine, responding to this pastoral need becomes a matter of pragmatic conjecture, unfortunately leading to the variety of both implicit and often impoverished theologies of Confirmation that arose in the twentieth century. Pastoral strategy divorced from the doctrinal richness of the Church can leave catechesis deprived of anything worthwhile to pass on. If one is to be a youth minister, it is not enough to know best practices for accompanying teens through adolescence, since one can accompany someone even off a cliff. Pastoral leaders must also know a good deal about what Catholicism teaches to lead members of Christ’s Body to the fullness of human happiness.

The Engaging Catholicism series invites you to see the intrinsic and intimate connection between doctrine and the pastoral life of the Church. Doctrines, after all, are the normative way of handing on the mysteries of our faith. Doctrines make us able to pick up a mystery, carry it around, and hand it to someone else. Doctrines, studied and understood, allow us to know we are handing on this mystery and not some substitute.

In order to properly hand on the mysteries of our faith, the pastoral leader has to know a given doctrine contains a mystery—has to have the doctrine opened up so that receiving it means encountering the mystery it carries. Only then can one be transformed by the doctrine. The problem with religious practice unformed or inadequately formed by doctrine is that it expects an easy and mostly continuous spiritual high, which cannot be sustained if one has sufficient grasp of one’s own humanity. We in the McGrath Institute for Church Life have confidence in Christian doctrines as saving truths, bearing mystery from the God who is love. We believe in the importance of these teachings for making us ever more human, and we believe in the urgent need to speak the Church’s doctrines into, for, and with those who tend the pastoral life of the Church. We cannot think of any task more important than this. The books of this series represent our best efforts toward this crucial effort.

John C. Cavadini

Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life

University of Notre Dame

Preface

This book, the first in a series dedicated to the union of doctrine and practice, seeks to heal the divorce between theology and the pastoral life of the Church. The series presumes that Catholic doctrine and practice propose to the disciple a form of life. Doctrine and practice invite us to assume a worldview, a way of approaching everything that exists. When we stand in the assembly of believers and proclaim the Creed during the Eucharistic liturgy, we are not speaking propositions that are valuable exclusively to intellectual Christians alone. To profess faith that God created the world from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) has implications for human life. If God created the world from nothing then all that exists is sheer gift from the God of infinite generosity, who has given us the will to respond not in a servile manner but in the freedom of love. As we meditate on what this doctrine means, we are invited to take up a posture of gratitude toward creation.

This book takes up the doctrines of real presence and transubstantiation as requiring both knowing and loving. In popular language, these two doctrines are used interchangeably. Yet they are two interrelated doctrines linked to the substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Meditating on these doctrines, one discovers the personal and thus healing presence of Jesus Christ in human history. Professing faith in Christ’s Eucharistic presence is not the result of a philosophical exercise but comes about through worshipping the hidden God under the species of bread and wine. These doctrines have implications for understanding who Jesus Christ is, the pedagogy by which God saves men and women through the Church, and how members of Christ’s Body may pursue holiness as creatures who are healed by eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ.

In these two doctrines, we see how the prayerful contemplation of doctrine offers to us a way of life grounded in practice and how practice bears fruit in the development of doctrine. This book will make this argument over the course of five chapters.

In the first chapter, I clear the way for a study of the doctrines of real presence and transubstantiation. I begin with a pastoral problem identified in the Church—namely, the declining belief in real presence in US Catholicism. A retrieval of the doctrines of real presence and transubstantiation is necessary for responding to this pastoral problem.

In the second chapter, I present the scriptural foundations of Eucharistic presence. The Eucharistic doctrine of presence relates to God’s intimate dwelling with the human family first through Israel and later through the Church. God reveals in the scriptures what it means for God to be present to us, how we are present to God, and what this means for our presence to one another. The Eucharist, in the New Testament, is closely tied to the revelation of God’s intimate dwelling among men and women.

In the third chapter, I turn to the development of the doctrine of real presence in the Fathers of the Church. The doctrine of real presence does not come forth at once but instead develops as the Church comes to understand what happens in the Eucharistic celebration. The doctrine of real presence is related to sacrifice and martyrdom, the materiality